Planet Magrathea, RIP

[Banners]

I'd suggest the Movie entry is in the worng place. Additionally, I would add an Internet point, which is of course related to the Movie entry thus...

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[IndigoPrime]

See, a lot of people have answered "not really" to #1, and "no, it's a shambolic mess" to #3, regardless of whether they liked the radio version and/or the books. The main problem, apparently, is that there are a lot of joke set-ups from other versions of H2G2, but they've omitted the punchlines. Still, we'll see, I guess.

[Richmond Clements]

We should also remember the vast amounts of fan-boy blood spilled when MJ wrote that review...

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[Oddboy]

Now this sort of buffoonery truely *is* the Spirit of the Original!

[Tiplodocus]

I was feeling a bit numb after reading the poor reviews (as in the film was poor and the review itself was poorly written).

But this thread made me laugh out loud several times.

 

[Adrian Bamforth]

The BBC/films review:

Thumbs (and towels) at the ready: this adaptation of the late Douglas Adams' sci-fi classic is more than just "mostly harmless", it's bloomin' brilliant. Even if you don't know your Slartibartfast from your Babel Fish, director Garth Jennings' take on the travails and travels of Arthur Dent (The Office's Martin Freeman) as he hitchhikes through the galaxy after the demolition of Earth is instantly endearing. It should do for British sci-fi what Shaun Of The Dead did for British horror.


Capturing the wry absurdist logic of Adams' comedy, Jennings' movie delivers more laughs than a single viewing can tease out. Funniest of all is the Guide itself - an encyclopaedic PDA voiced by Stephen Fry - that Dent clings to as he's propelled into space by intergalactic journo Ford Prefect (Mos Def, a left-field casting choice, but perfect as Prefect). He soon finds himself onboard a spaceship with Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell, suitably annoying), Marvin the Paranoid Android (voiced despairingly by Alan Rickman) and Zooey Deschanel's sprightly Trillion.


"IT'S HARD TO SEE HOW THIS COULD BE BETTER"


The budgetary limitations of this sci-fi epic are glaringly obvious, but they simply add to the general air of joky tattiness. A running gag involves the spaceship's Infinite Improbability Drive's effects - in one delirious sequence the entire cast are turned into wool people. As Vogons read torturous poetry and white mice try to solve the mystery of life, the universe and everything, it's hard to see how this could have been better. Reserve us a table at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe now, please.


The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is released in UK cinemas on Thursday 28th April 2005.

[Art]

The reviews by sane people are beginning to come in... so far it's encouraging.

Link: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galaxy/" target="_blank">http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hitchhikers_guide_

[Conexus]

I've got a great idea guys, lets get somebody that HATES Hitchhiker's even in it's original incarnation, that'll be a great way to get a fair and balanced view, won't it?  

Link: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=1569" target="_blank">OH  YES!

[petemaskreplica]

Well, I've seen it.

I went with the expectation that it'd be moderately entertaining, but not a patch on the book, and I got pretty much what I expected. Hard to see how it could be better? maybe, but it's also easy to see why it isn't any better.

It's very disjointed. Well of course it is, so's the source material. The difference is that making it up as you go along while producing a ground-breaking radio serial in the late 70's leads to a fun, free-wheeling ride, it just seems bitty and directionless when you're adapting a 25 year old radio series for a Hollywood movie. So we get lots of re-jigged versions of favourite skits which don't work quite as well as they did on Radio 4 in 1978. Although that's true of the books, too.  The opening sequence in particular feels heavily over-edited and rushed, but maybe that's just because I'm over-familiar with the original. Radio monologues wouldn't work on film, and it'd be stupid to try.

That's a lot of the problem really - this film seems caught between trying to please the fans, and trying to reinvent the material as a decent movie. So we get a semblance of a plot attempting to tie together lots of sketches, combined with a frenetic pace trying to hid the holes in the plot, and it doesn't really gel.

Of course, another problem is that I first heard most of the jokes 25 years ago, so they can't possibly seem fresh, and the fact that I did chuckle a bit says a lot for their enduring quality.

There are some fan-pleasing moments - Simon Jones has a cameo, and the funniest line in the film, and the TV Marvin turns up in the background at one point. But that just serves to point up how the design of the new Marvin misses the point - it's clearly come from the train of thought: "Hey! He's got a brain the size of a planet, and he's depressed! Let's give him a downcast posture and a big round head!" the TV Marvin on the other hand, with its ghastly rictus grin, actually looks like something that might come from the sort of "creative" minds that also thought a good marketing slogan would be "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with".

I actually quite like the way they've done Zaphod's head. But it seems pedantic and unnecessary to try and explain WHY he has two heads. And having established that he has a third arm, they seem to completely forget about it for the rest of the film. What they should have done of course is not bother giving him two heads and three arms - that's one throwaway line in a radio show, for chrissakes - but they couldn't dare do that, what would the fans say? This is a film that's overwhelmingly scared of itself - it doesn't want to offend diehard fans, it doesn't want to alienate any potential new audience, and it ends up pleasing neither camp fully.

I'm being over negative perhaps - there are plenty of nice bits, the tour of the Magrathean workshop's well done, the Point Of View Gun's a fun idea, the cast are good, the effects are pretty good. Overall it's definitely a curates egg, good in parts. I liked the dolphin song at the start, the animations that accompany the Book monologues are fun, the Book's there but they sensibly don't push it to the forefront - it' a concept that seemed wild and exotic in 1978, but it's barely short of mundane reality now. And the ending has some funny stuff with Vogons and Marvin before it descends into sickly sentimentality.

So, it diverted me for a couple of hours, I chuckled a bit, laughed out loud at least twice, like I say it was as good as I thought it would be, no more, no less. It's not nearly as good as the radio version, but let's be honest, neither are the books or the TV series. And it had me (albeit with a hundred or so other people) singing in it for about 30 seconds, which is as close to movie stardom as I'm likely to get :)

Not great, not a disaster, just a run of the mill sci fi comedy, really. If they'd made it in 1980 it would probably have seemed a lot more special, but hey, that's life. And it's back on the radio next week, I'm looking forward to seeing if that can make "So Long And thanks For All The Fish" seem any good ;)